During the underwriting process for property insurance, insurance companies evaluate the risk and exposures of potential or current customers. In order to evaluate this risk, the insurance companies assign an agent to investigate the property of a potential customer to determine the risk and exposures of the property and to determine an appropriate premium that is commensurate with the exposure presented by the risk.
Often, the property investigations can be time-consuming, difficult and even dangerous for the insurance agents. For example, in order to investigate the risk and exposures of a home owner's roof, an agent may have to climb onto the roof, and perform inspections while on the owner's roof. By climbing on the roof and attempting to maneuver around the roof to perform his inspection, the insurance agent opens himself to a real risk of injury, especially in difficult weather conditions where the roof may be slippery because of rain, snow, and/or ice and winds may be severe.
Even if the insurance agent performs the inspection without getting injured, performing the full investigation may still be time-consuming. In addition to the time required to drive to and from the property and to perform the inspection itself, significant paperwork and calculations may be involved in calculating premium for the customers. For example, if an insurance agent takes photos on the roof of a customer's building in order to calculate the appropriate premium commensurate with the risk presented by the condition of the roof, the agent may have to come back to his office, research the customer's property, compare the condition of the customer's property to similar properties in good condition and determine the level of risk associated with the customer's property. All of these steps are time consuming and both delay issuing an insurance policy to a customer and prevent the agent from performing underwriting for other customers.